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Wednesday, August 26, 2015

A few months ago, I discovered a local Needlepoint Store and dragged a few friends along. In preparation, I asked around about nice wedding sampler patterns, and discovered one by Teresa Wentzler that I liked. The colors were not quite as warm as I wanted. That was okay, I figured, since I could just replace them with slightly different shades at the store.

As it turns out Theresa Wentzler has hundreds of shades in each project. That replacement went poorly at best. I decided to leave them alone and make one as is. If it's really not my style, I'll make it for my cousin (I have to make one for her anyway, and she's always liked cooler colors), and then try to replace some of the colors now that I know how it works.

I didn't want to start on the Wedding Sampler, though, as my first foray into needlepoint in a matter of years, and have it end up warped; I purchased a set of Season Samplers to supplement.

Over the last few months, I have been working on and off on this Sampler, and I have finally finished it! I am so ecstatic!

The longest part, by far, was the over-one plateau. About halfway into the sampler, I figured I was almost done, because all I had left was the ribbons/bead (which I saved for last) and the over-one section. Boy was I wrong! That's when it hit me - the over-one won't take twice as long, it will take four times as long, since each stitch is one-fourth of the size of an over-two stitch. Oft course I wasn't almost done!

As you can see there are small sparkly beads in the border, and the ribbon flowers repeat from the border as french knots in two separate places.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

When I was about six years old, my grandmother decided that every year, she wanted each of her grandchildren to make her a Christmas ornament. These ornaments were for a special tree dedicated to the grandchildren, which soon became overcrowded, of course.

Now, I was never the best at follow-through as a kid (which is why I started this blog, remember?), and so I always chose a DIY ornament and almost never finished them, resulting in a few interesting finds when I cleaned out my childhood bedroom.

Well, it's been at least a decade since I followed Grandma's wishes, and so this year, I decided to use up a little sock yarn (which qualifies it as Cold Sheep!) and make her a mini-sweater ornament!

This was also my first experience with a Raglan sweater construction, which you'll hear more about later.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

My brother is an avid Red Sox fan. We were 7 and 13 when the Sox finally Reversed the Curse, beating out the Yankees for the pennant and going on to win the series (against the Cardinals) for the first time in 86 years. We traded the Babe to the Yankees early in his career, and once there, he became an alcoholic with a failing marriage. It was the curse of the Bambino (so the story goes), and we finally broke it in 2004. What a year.

He couldn't have escaped, really. There was no chance for him.

And so, as he runs off to college in chilly Michigan, I figured I would present him with some hand knit, warm, wool, reverse-Red-Sox socks.

(Note: I had this yarn already as part of a sock kit my parents got me for my birthday from Canada. Hence to color reversal.)

This was a multi-layered project. I first chose to use an afterthought heel in order to size them upon arrival. I did a toe-up basic sock construction with corrugated ribbing for the cuff. All I had to do was add a co-ordinating red heel.

And then he saw them.
He loved them, and thought they were soft and perfect.

Except the corrugated ribbing was way too tight and they ended up being much longer than I had intended.

I took them back with me to fix them up, and order more red yarn. At which point I discovered they didn't do that color anymore. Whoops.
Well, I figured that since I had to rip the ribbing out anyway and make the sock shorter, I would just make the ribbing the natural color and make the heel red. I finished one up for him to try when we went back for the summer.

It was close, but not perfect, so I adjusted and copied. The end results are in, and personally I think they look closer to the Red Sox logo than the originals!